| Abstract Detail
Evolution of Development and Physiology Folta, Kevin M. [1], Davis, Thomas [2], Steeves, Cody [3], Clancy, Maureen [3]. Functional Characterization of Novel Rosaceae Genes in Transgenic Arabidopsis and Strawberry (Fragaria spp.). The Rosaceae family contains diverse fruit, nut, wood and ornamental plant species, including apple, peach, rose, brambles and strawberry. Independent evolution and heavy cultivation have almost certainly generated a subset of transcripts that contain unique modifiers of rosaceous crop form and function. Identification of these genes may illuminate unique facets of rosaceous crop physiology and serve as a basis for generation of molecular markers for assisted selection. A parsing of the Rosaceae EST databases reveals many transcripts (~10%) with no clear orthologs outside of the family (e >0.01). This project leverages our unique strawberry EST library resources, innovative 454 methods in EST sequence capture, the agility of Gateway cloning, and the efficient transformation capacities of Arabidopsis and strawberry to functionally characterize these potentially important transcripts. In a pilot study of 46 unique transcripts encoding uncharacterized, predicted pioneer proteins, a surprisingly high number presented conspicuous phenotypes when overexpressed in Arabidopsis. Phenotypes include defects in stem elongation, chloroplast partitioning in organs, leaf number, flowering time, leaf shape, trichome development, and flower development. Loss and gain-of-function studies are underway in strawberry with the goal of discerning function in the crop itself. Since strawberry is a readily transformable member of the Rosaceae and coding sequences are highly conserved between rosaceous crops, strawberry represents a valuable surrogate to initially describe the biological roles of these novel genes. The findings generated in this study stand to expand model system derived paradigms and potentially add new resolution to existing regulatory mechanisms distilled from study of model plant systems.
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Related Links:
Strawberry Genes - Tom Davis Lab Website
1 - University of Florida, Horticultural Sciences Department and the Graduate Program for Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology, 1301 Fifield Hall, Gainesville, FL, 32611, USA
2 - University of New Hampshire, Department of Plant Biology
3 - University of Florida, Horticultural Sciences Department
Keywords:
Fragaria
Rosaceae
Functional genomics
novel regulators
gene function.
Presentation Type: ASPB Minisymposium
Session: M15
Location: Continental B/Hilton
Date: Monday, July 9th, 2007
Time: 11:30 AM
Number: M15003
Abstract ID:670 |
